Unfortunately, it is often the case that I find that I have not read any of the works of recent Nobel Prize in Literature winners (and sometimes, I haven't even heard of them before the prize was awarded), so I was very excited to learn this morning that the 2013 winner is the Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro. I have been reading Munro's wonderful story collections for years, and I think it is fantastic that the committee has awarded her the prize, especially since she recently announced that she was planning to retire.

Any of her many story collections are worth a read, but I particularly recommend this book as a place to start. Most of Munro's stories are set in small Canadian towns, and deal with ordinary people in the extraordinary moments of their lives. Check out the author the Swedish Academy calls "the master of the contemporary short story."